Spidermen, spidermen!

Check out my sales page, now full of cheap 1/72 scale sprues suitable for fantasy, in addition to Reaper Bones figures and other goodies.

Spidermen! No not that kind, this kind:

Driders, or "drow-spiders," or spider-centaurs. Dark elves punished (or rewarded, depending on edition) by their spider-goddess Lolth with an aspect of her spidery form. One of those curiosities from D&D that's somehow stuck with fantasy gamers. Recall that these are mostly Alliance elves patched onto "jorogumo" figures from Arcane Legions.

Melee guys above. Archers and sorceress below; the sorceress bod is a Caesar elf. I worry that she looks either like Mrs. Santa Claus via the Brothers Grimm, or else a Star Trek bridge officer after a teleportation accident.

Side views, showing off the spidery livery this crew is wearing for some reason. Not the greatest freehand you'll ever see, but looks okay on the table.

Let's check out the larger drider figure, maybe an alpha drider, or possibly an avatar of Lolth herself. It's a Reaper Bones "Spider Centaur" archer figure. I swapped her bow arm with a Skink bit—should have either swapped both arms or else just trimmed the bow from her original hand. Looks kind of wonky. I also regret that her face is a bit obscure. Should have put more black around the mouth. I think it's not too bad overall, though. It's actually a smaller figure than you might expect, pretty close in body size to Sven the 1/72 comparison viking.

The spotted pattern on the back is loosely inspired by actual black widow spiders, which also inspired the general red-white-black colors of this squad.

This was a fun project. I'm really pleased how the mods turned out on the 1/72 figures. Painting was a quick and dirty affair for the most part, but I like the overall look. They'll be a nice addition, or counterpoint to, the drow figures I painted a month ago.

Coming soon: demon legions, and other hellish beings!

10-figure endrowment (drow and drider mods)

For my gnoll project, a bunch of Alliance elf figures donated their bodies, leaving me with a small pile of elf heads. So it seemed natural that my next project make use of them. Hence, dark elves, or drow as they are known in D&D.

The orange heads are from the Alliance elves. The gray bodies are either Caesar "conehead" elves or Caesar adventurers. The sorceress was originally human, but I borrowed an elf head from the Caesar set.

Some more mods with the Alliance elf heads. The bodies here are a Hat "Robin Hood" figure, a Twilight Creations cultist, a Hat Gallic commander, and an Arcane Legions warrior priestess. The cultist figure got a bit of a height reduction just by cutting off the base and part of the robes.

Figures from the back, mostly to show off how I kept the hair on the elf heads mostly intact. Note the yellow bits of Milliput that fill in the gaps.

While making the drow, I decided to make some driders as well. In D&D, these are drow that have been punished—or rewarded, depending on the edition—with the spidery form of their spider goddess Lolth. The "jorogumo" figures from the Arcane Legions Han booster provide the spidery body.

The drider sorceress' torso is from a Caesar elf. The others are Alliance elves. Without their gangly legs, they actually look pretty good as elfy creatures.

With the Caesar elves seemingly OOP, the Alliance elves are the only choice for 1/72 plastic, but they are awfully tall. As a source for headswaps, though, I hope you'll agree that they can be worthwhile.

I'm hoping to get these primed this weekend, then we'll see about painting. Stay tuned!

Ask the CFM: Greek Monsters

Photo credit www.CEDMagic.com

It's "Ask the Cheap Fantasy Miniaturist"! Every now and then visitors ask me questions about where to find various minis in 1/72 scale, and I do my best to answer in the comments. Since I'm on a hiatus from the hobby, I thought it'd be good to feature some of these Qs&As.

Let's start with Dave, who in this thread asks:

Hi, was wondering if you have any harpies, satyrs, driders or half snake type D&D minis, and if so, how well do they fit into 1/72.

They look ideal for adding to an ancient Greek army I'm slowly putting together; but as i'm UK based I don't want to waste any money on ordering from either the US or overpriced UK stockists if they're too big/small.

Thanks for any help! Love the blog :-)
Dave

My answer:

Hey Dave, thanks! You'll find that most DnD minis will look a little large next to 1/72 figures. The ones I use are actually meant for small critters in DnD scale; a lot of those halfing minis look about human sized in 1/72, but that also means that most human figures in DnD scale look too big in 1/72.

There are some other possibilities. For satyrs, try Splintered Light in 20mm. For snakemen, you might be able to modify these Armies of Arcana 15mm figures, or just settle for smaller snakemen. Similarly, you may be able to make these 15mm Demonworld harpies work. For driders, you can try to find jorogumo figures from Arcane Legions, or just buy a Han booster brick. I discuss these figures here. I'm going to do some body swaps on the jorogumo figures with some Caesar Miniatures elves to give my driders more variety.

A recent post at 1/72 Multiverse shows that this harpy figure is also a good match for 1/72. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out my snakemen conversions. For other Greek Monsters, check out the Roman or Egyptian booster brick for Arcane Legions or the Greek Age of Mythology set from Eagle Games.

I've got a few more of these questions I'd like to feature. If you have anything more for me, feel free to ask!

Cultists, and other figure mods

Hey, don't forget I'm selling a ton of cheap plastic minis, including Kickstarter Reaper Bones and WoW boardgame figures. Check out the sale here.

Painting miniatures is great, but sometimes I need a distraction while still doing something hobby-related. Sometimes I need something a little more instantly gratifying than what painting can give me. I'm finding that modifying figures to create something new gives me exactly this: it's creative, I get results I like very quickly, and given that not everything I want is in 1/72 (the preferred scale of this blog), it's often necessary. I describe the basic technique I use here. Of course I still have to paint the little dudes eventually, but that comes later, usually after I finish the concurrent painting project.

Let's start with some evil cultists. I got the idea from Plasticgeneral's and El Senyor Verd's blogs. The bodies are Caesar Miniatures undead, while the heads are from Zvezda peasants or HAT/Airfix Robin Hood figures. I decided to completely carve away the scythes the bodies were holding, and though it looks a little rough, I think it will look okay once painted. I also tried some reposing with the arms, and I may do a little more so it doesn't look like the entire sinister congregation is holding invisible polearms. You can see the yellow blobs of Milliput I used to hide the seems in a few figures, but for the most part everything lined up surprisingly well.

Of course, everyone knows that if you join an evil cult, there's a fair chance you'll wind up turning into a degenerate snake monster (or evil fish beast, or host to an eldritch squid god). These guys got head swaps with Arcane Legions sta figures. The middle guy also got a hand swap because I thought he ought to be holding the nifty snake staff the necromancer-looking guy above has. The hooded fellow on the left (possibly a snakeman in cognito) has a head from a Micro Machines jawa miniature.

Here's a picture I took of some body swaps I did months ago. You can see the original figures and the resulting swaps. We have a Caesar Miniatures knight, an Arcane Legions lion-rider, a CM elf, and an AL jorogumo (spider-monster). The idea for the elf-jorogumo swap was to make a drider, a classic dark-elf/spider monster from D&D. You can see the glob of wood glue I used to crudely fill in the gap between the two halves.

As I was messing around with the more recent headswaps, I took the opportunity to fill in the seams a little better with some Milliput. I also did a few more headswaps using Caesar Miniatures goblins. The goblin wizard on the left has a jawa body (its head went to the hooded cultist above) (P.S., my wife mentioned that the goblin wizard looks like Yoda, who when you think about it basically is a goblin wizard). Next to him is a swap between two goblin figures to make a goblin chieftan. Since I didn't want to waste the leftover bodies, I added some Greek villager heads from Age of Mythology minis to make some halfing barbarians: They aren't quite as crude and radioactive-looking in person.

I'm also messing around with some conversions for a demon army, but that will probably be a later post.